Today Square Enix held the second part of the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Tokyo Game Show Letter from the Producer Live with Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida answering questions from the fan and giving information on the Binding Coil of Bahamuth dungeon, the Crystal Tower raid dungeon, player housing and more.

As a bonus Yoshinori Kitase waked on stage introducing a rather spectacular trailer showing the crossover with Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII that also included an appearance of Final Fantasy XIII‘s Odin and Bahamuth. The crossover event will be a F.A.T.E. (Full Active Time Event, basically a public quest) type encounter and will be available in FFXIV during the week after the release of Lightning Returns on November the 14th.

Yoshida-san moved on to talk about the Binding Coil of Bahamuth dungeon, saying that it still hasn’t been cleared, and its content is going to be further expanded. A second trailer was showcased showing off the interior of the dungeon (including a slightly spoilerish frame, that I did not include in the screencaps below, so don’t worry).

The Crystal Tower raid dungeon will be added in version 2.1, the battle against Bahamuth himself in 2.2 and the second stage of Crystal Tower in 2.3. Bahamuth will be extremely hard.

As patches go on players will get buffs for the Binding Coil of Bahamuth when they die a lot, in order to allow more people to gradually progress in it.

The crystal tower will accommodate raids of three full parties (24 people) of high level players, is inspired by Final Fantasy III, will have “nostalgic” boss battles (Screenshots were being shown, specifying that the environments are huge, you can find them in the gallery below).

The optimal setup for Crystal Tower will have two tanks, two healers and four damage dealers for party, and at times the three parties will have to split and operate separately. Initially the timing was very strict and it was too hard, so it’s being relaxed a little. Each run of the tower will take 90-120 minutes counting a couple wipes.

The rewards for clearing the tower will include some of the items from the Final Fantasy III end game gear, such as the Fuma Garb.

Housing will both for free companies and individual players, and there will be estates of three sizes (small, medium, large) in the housing areas of the three city states. Houses can be customized with 380 different parts like wallpapers and roofs and interior furniture. A trailer was shown for this as well, showcasing a rather spectacular level of customization. Prices for land plots haven’t been set yet.

In your housing you can grow gysahl greens, raise your chocobos and the team is working on including crafting spaces in the basements, where players can collaborate to build big items like ships, but this is still in the development stage.

Free companies will also be able to hire NPC vendors for their housing. Retainer stands to place retainers will also be included. Many housing items will be made by crafters from items conquered by battle classes.

The Wolves’ Den PvP area will have three different tiers for levels 30, 40 and 50, and pitch groups of four players against each other. There will be PvP only abilities balanced for PvP.

Fighting in the Wolves’ Den you’ll earn PvP specific gear and players from premade groups will be matched only with other premade groups. Players coming from the duty finder will fight only against players in the same situation. There won’t be any easy mode for premades and miserable times for those in random parties.

The team is also working on a separate area set up for 1 vs 1 matches.

Patch 2.1 that will include the content described above will be deployed within the year. Below you can see a gallery with all the relevant screencaps showing screenshots, artworks and the trailers. For the moment the trailers haven’t been published online yet. We’ll post them as soon as they’re available (Update: they’re now available, alongside a batch of high resolution screenshots and artwork. You can find them here).